A first one of separate type air conditioners of the prior art is an outdoor power-receiving type one shown in FIG. 3. This separate type air conditioner includes an indoor unit 210 having an indoor control section 211, and an outdoor unit 220 having an outdoor control section 221. Electric power is fed from a power supply 230 via a terminal block 222 (terminals 222a, 222b) of the outdoor unit 220. Then, via the terminal block 222 (terminals 222a, 222b) of the outdoor unit 220, power-supply use interconnection lines L201, L202, and a terminal block 214 (terminals 214A, 214B) of the indoor unit 210, electric power is fed from the power supply 230 to the indoor unit 210. The indoor control section 211 of the indoor unit 210 and the outdoor control section 221 of the outdoor unit 220 are communicated with each other via the terminal block 214 (214C), a communication use interconnection line L203, and the terminal block 222 (222c).
The separate type air conditioner of this constitution has a drawback that it is impossible to stop the power supply to the outdoor unit 220 while the indoor unit 210 alone keeps being powered for convenience of indoor-side operation in order to meet power consumption regulations in the standby state.
Therefore, the present inventor has proposed a separate type air conditioner which is capable of reducing the standby power consumption by interrupting the power supply to the standby-state outdoor unit side, whichever the power supply from the external is connected to the indoor unit or the outdoor unit (see, e.g., JP 3019844 B1).
However, the separate type air conditioner, which interrupts the power supply to the standby-state outdoor unit side, has a need for a control board and a relay different in specifications from the normal indoor power-receiving system so as to provide also for the outdoor power-receiving system, causing the parts count to increase so that the structure becomes more complex. Moreover, there is a need for incorporating complex processing into the control program on the outdoor unit side, so that the manufacturing cost and development cost becomes higher, disadvantageously.